According to aides, First Lady Barbara Bush is leaning...

November 05, 1989|By Michael Kilian, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — According to aides, First Lady Barbara Bush is leaning against attending her husband`s seaborne nonsummit summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev next month, though an official decision has not yet been announced. The trip apparently will involve little more than an over-and-back flight and boat ride to a U.S. warship in the Mediterranean, and there`s not much Mrs. Bush can do from a gun deck to advance her favorite causes of world literacy and enhanced family life.

Of course, she never has seemed too keen on joining her husband for his high-speed jaunts on his cigarette boat, Fidelity, either. Bush is fond of taking visitors, especially journalists, out for quease-inspiring, zoomy speedboat jaunts, and it`s probably a boon to world peace that he hasn`t suggested taking Gorby out for a spin and chat on Fidelity.

One wonders if Raisa Gorbachev will show up, as she did at the summit in Iceland even though then-First Lady Nancy Reagan stayed home. What might that mean for world peace-or at least for gun-deck safety-if she should decide to go on one of her spur-of-the-moment whirlwind tours?

One also wonders if the Secret Service plans to set up its usual metal detectors on the summit ship. There`s virtually nothing on a warship but metal.

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Mrs. Reagan, with the former president again in tow, returns to New York City in the middle of the month to fulfill some lingering social obligations. She cut short her gala tour of the Big Apple in September after only 3 of 10 scheduled days (Some say so she could return when her husband`s hair was more fully grown out after his recent brain surgery.). According to reports, she`ll also tape a Barbara Walters interview in a luxurious suite of her former home away from home, the Upper East Side`s five-star Carlyle Hotel.

They`ll likely talk about Mrs. Reagan`s new book, ``My Turn,`` which is not meeting with universal acclaim. Muckraking biographer Kitty Kelley, hard at work on her own version of the Nancy Reagan story, has said the book is full of ``gaps and distortions.`` Others have expressed shock and dismay

(we`ll bet) that it doesn`t include any photos of stepdaughter Maureen Reagan. (A Reagan spokesman said last week that the publisher had cut out some pictures for space reasons-Maureen`s among them-and that Nancy Reagan was upset with the decision.) A member of the Bush administration who read ``My Turn`` counted 98 first-person references-``I,`` ``me,`` ``my,`` ``mine,``

etc.-on a single page.

Kelley, making an appearance at Washington`s big black-tie PEN/Faulkner literary dinner Monday night, said she thinks Mrs. Reagan is going to remain a controversial public figure for years. From the sound of all those ``I`s`` and ``me`s,`` she won`t mind.

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Things seem to be getting a little testy over at the Supreme Court. The newest members of the nation`s highest bench-Justices Sandra Day O`Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy-have been eager beavers when it comes to asking nit-probing questions of attorneys presenting cases, occasionally to the impatience of older members. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was in the process of querying an attorney in a Kansas City school desegregation case last week when O`Connor, a fellow Arizonan and law school classmate, chirped in with her own question. ``Just a minute!`` the chief justice snapped and then proceeded with his inquiry.

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During his recent NATO trip to Europe, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was happy to give his British counterpart, Defense Minister Tom King, a lift home to London on an American military jet.

But, arriving at the English capital, Cheney himself got less than red-carpet treatment, which, because of new budget cuts, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is now according red carpet treatment only to visiting heads of state-not mere Cabinet officers.

Consequently, Cheney was provided neither motorcade nor traffic-light considerations, and he was compelled to endure the rigors of London rush-hour traffic just like everyone else. (Cabinet officers don`t get motorcades in Washington, either, though some of their chauffeurs drive as though they do.) Cheney also discovered that his British honor guard was armed with automatic weapons. Welcoming ceremonies were a little warmer when the guardsmen had only swords and pikes.